Fear by Night (6 page)

When she had talked herself into a good humour, Ann said,

“Where are we going, Mrs. Halliday?”

Mrs. Halliday's long nose crinkled a little. Her head, with the grey hair banded on either side of a wide parting and surmounted by a white lace cap trimmed with yellow satin ribbon, nodded in time to her chuckling laugh.

“You wait and see, Miss Vernon my dear!”

CHAPTER VII

Charles Anstruther got Ann's letter on Saturday morning. It disquieted him enough to send him straight off to Westley Gardens, where a young footman in undress informed him that the family had left, and that the house was being shut up. He didn't know anything about an address. Tipped by Charles, he believed that Mr. Halliday, and Mrs. Halliday, and Miss Vernon, and Mrs. Halliday's maid were going for a cruise on Mr. Halliday's motor yacht. He was very sorry, but he didn't know any more than that. He had only been engaged for the month, and it was the same with all the other servants. They were shutting up the house, and handing in the key to a firm of house-agents.

“I'm very sorry, sir, I'm sure, but I expect they'll have let the post office know about their letters, so if you was to write to this address, it would likely be forwarded.”

Charles came away rather more disquieted than before.

He wrote to Ann, and presently got the letter back again. It was clear that, whatever Mr. and Mrs. Halliday had done, Ann had either not had an opportunity of arranging for her letters to be forwarded or had not availed herself of it. She had promised to send him an address, but none came. He began to rake London for people who might possibly know something about Mr. James Halliday. The man who had hinted at rum-running was a chance-met club acquaintance and had most inopportunely departed to Norway. Everybody Charles wanted appeared to be somewhere else.

He contrived in the end to meet unofficially one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, and of him made discreet inquiries. He did not find the interview a very reassuring one. On Charles' side Ann appeared as a cousin who had taken a job which worried her family. It is doubtful whether the Assistant Commissioner was deceived by this camouflage. On his part it appeared that, as far as the police were concerned, Mr. James Halliday had no history. He had never been in prison. He had never been in the hands of the police. Officially, there was nothing against him.

This should have been reassuring, but somehow it wasn't. As the Assistant Commissioner talked, Charles received a very definite impression that Jimmy Halliday—he spoke of him as Jimmy Halliday—owed this enviable state of affairs not so much to the innocence of his character as to the astuteness of his brain. “He looks like a mug and he talks like a mug, and if he'd been half such a mug as he looks, we'd have landed him long ago.” Pressed by Charles, the Assistant Commissioner had almost as little to impart as the young footman at Westley Gardens.

“He's gone off on a cruise,” said Charles.

“He started life as a sailor, I believe,” said the Assistant Commissioner.

“Miss Vernon's on board as his mother's companion.”

“Oh, then I should think she'd be all right,” said the Assistant Commissioner cheerfully. “He's a very good son, I believe. Your—er—cousin will be all right if she's with the old lady. I can let you know where the yacht touches if you like.”

It was ten days later that he got a line saying that the
Emma
had put in at Oban, and by the next post he got a picture postcard from Ann. It depicted the copy of the Acropolis which so incongruously crowns the hill above that West Highland port. Charles could have done without the picture and with more of the pencilled lines in which Ann addressed him as her darling Charles, announced that she was having the time of her life and was thinking of taking a permanent job as a cabin-boy, and concluded with the cryptic remark: “Films are off. This is the great out of doors.” There was a little “Ann” in the corner just slipping off the card.

Charles called himself seven kinds of damn fool, had a couple of suit-cases packed, his car greased and filled up, and departed up the Great North Road, leaving the sale of Bewley hung up between the boot-manufacturer's latest advance and his, Charles', latest retreat.

The
Emma
stayed twenty-four hours at Oban, took Gale Anderson on board in an unobtrusive manner, and put to sea again in halcyon weather. Ann was enjoying herself so much that she was ready to be friends with all the world, but even on a day when the sea and the sky swam together in a blue and golden haze and only the faintest of clouds just touched the sparkling water with a passing shade of hyacinth or amethyst, she did not feel as if she could ever really be friends with Gale Anderson. It was a pity, because it would have been nice to have had someone young to play with.

Gale Anderson was young, in the early thirties. He was good-looking in a quiet, well-featured, fair-haired way—heaps better looking than Charles, who had a dark, ugly face which became ferocious when he frowned. On the other hand, when he smiled, you forgot all about his being ugly and you were put to it not to weaken.

Ann dragged herself away from remembering how Charles looked when he smiled. If it was undermining, the less she thought about it the better. Charles, refused, would probably marry the boot-manufacturer's daughter, which would be very nice, because then he wouldn't have to sell Bewley.

Gale Anderson neither smiled nor looked ferocious. He was pale, polite, and indifferent, and his cool blue eyes when they rested upon Ann appeared to find her of no more interest than if she had been a binnacle or a bulwark.

“Puts me in mind of a young gentleman that visited in my first place,” said Mrs. Halliday. “Courting Miss Edith he was, and everyone said how lucky she was to get him, but it didn't turn out at all 'appy—not that there was anything against him, but he'd a sort of h'icy way with him that made me come up goose flesh all over, if you know what I mean.”

Ann knew exactly what she meant, and said so.

“Then best keep mum about it,” said Mrs. Halliday, “for him and Jimmy's as thick as thieves.”

The words stayed in Ann's mind. They said themselves over once or twice when Jimmy Halliday and Gale Anderson walked up and down the deck talking in the low tones which never satisfied anyone else's curiosity. But of course there was nothing to be curious about.

They dawdled along among the islands and up the coast. It was all quite perfect. The weather went on being blue and gold for two days, and then broke in a thunderstorm. There was a flicker of lightning on the far edge of the horizon as the sun went down, and a lead-coloured bank of cloud crossed by puffs of white like the smoke from a heavy gun. The white clouds raced across the black one, and the black cloud itself came up and filled the sky. In a moment it seemed to be dark.

Ann was not at all pleased at being ordered off the deck. She wanted to watch. The wind came up in a squally gust and dropped again. For a moment everything held its breath, and then the lightning ran in a jagged scrawl across the zenith and a deafening clap of thunder followed. As James Halliday fairly pushed her inside the companion and slammed the door, a second squall struck the yacht and Ann was tipped down the companion with a noise in her ears that drowned the sound of the thunder. She got to her feet and slid across the saloon. As she caught at the handle of Mrs. Halliday's cabin, the door gave and she was flung inside. A brilliant flash lit the skylight overhead, but she could not hear the thunder for the noise of the wind. She would not have believed that wind could make so much noise. It was like thunder, and an express train, and a great whip cracking, and about half a million fiddles gone mad.

She steadied herself against the tilting of the cabin floor. Her blood was racing and she felt as if she had been running hard. It was all very exciting, but it was quite evident that neither Mrs. Halliday nor Riddle was enjoying it. Mrs. Halliday was in her berth with a frilled nightcap on her head and a fine knitted shawl about her shoulders. She looked white but determined, and at intervals of about half a minute she said, “Don't be a fool, Riddle!” You could see her saying it, but you could not hear the words because of the wind.

The impassive Riddle was completely dissolved in terrified tears. They rolled openly down her large pale face and fell unregarded upon her neat black lap. She sat sideways upon her bunk and clutched the edge. When the wind struck them with one of its heavier blows and the floor tilted, she screamed. Ann could see her mouth opening and the shriek coming out, and whenever it was possible to hear anything, Mrs. Halliday said, “Don't be a fool, Riddle!” And all the time the skylight brightened and darkened overhead as the lightning came and went. Then with a strange suddenness the fury of the squall was over.

Ann climbed uphill to the door, and then, as the boat went over, was shot right across the saloon. She wanted desperately to get out on deck again and see the lightning make its flashlight pictures of the black hurrying clouds and straining sea. She began to make her way towards the companion, but a sudden lurch flung her against the door of the cabin shared by Mr. Halliday and Gale Anderson. The door gave and she went slipping down against the bunks. In a moment there was water running down her neck, and her hands groped and slipped upon wet metal. The wind blew down upon her up-turned face. The skylight was an inch or two open, overlooked in the sudden flurry of the storm. It was raining now in torrents, and the water was coming in faster every moment.

She climbed on to the bunk to shut the skylight, and as she steadied herself, she heard Gale Anderson say, so close that it startled her,

“Damn fool to send her down! There'll never be a better opportunity.”

The voice came through the open skylight. The rain splashed round the sound of it without confusing the words.

And then James Halliday said,

“The old lady sets a good deal of store by her. I won't have her put about.”

Ann stood quite still.

There was no more to hear. The rain came down, and the boat rolled in the choppy sea.

She left the skylight open and the wet coming in, and made her way up the companion. She could not put any meaning to the words that she had heard. Mr. Halliday had made her go below. Why was he a damn fool to do it? Or weren't they talking about her at all? And what was the opportunity that had been missed?

She got the door open, and the wind met her. Not the raging fury of a little while ago, but a joyful, bounding wind that came hallooing across the open sea, flinging its showers at them and whooping off again. Ann held to the rail and looked out upon black tossing water. The lightning flickered away in the north, violet and green, and the clouds drove dark before the wind. On the western horizon was one pale streak of a light between green and grey.

Ann did not know quite when she began to have the feeling that someone was watching her. If she was visible at all, it must be only as a black blob. Why should anyone watch a black blob? Why for that matter should anyone watch Ann Vernon? She called herself an idiot and listened to James Halliday shouting out that there was another squall coming. She supposed she would have to go down again, but it would be much more interesting to stay there. She forgot the feeling of being watched as she looked out into the dark and heard the roar of the coming squall. Then, as she turned regretfully and groped for the companion door, something struck her on the head and she fell. There was a confusion of wind and water, an icy drenching, and a roaring noise. She was flung against something hard. Her hands clutched, and closed upon emptiness.

She had not time to be afraid before a grip that hurt was on her arm, her waist, and a moment later she was inside the companion, with Jimmy Halliday shouting at her. She could hear him above the wind, because it was he who was holding her. In a voice that sounded as if he was using a megaphone he was inquiring what the blank, blank, blankety something she meant by coming on deck when he had told her to stay below—“You blank, blank, blank little fool, you!”

Ann was so dazed that she just stared at him and went on staring. There was a little bright light just overhead. It showed Jimmy Halliday's face not six inches from her own, all puffed and scarlet under the wet sandy hair, whilst angry words and oaths came pattering out of his mouth like hailstones. She ought to have been angry, or frightened, or grateful, because she had very nearly been drowned, and he was swearing at her, and it began very dimly to occur to her that he had saved her life. But she wasn't angry or frightened or grateful, or anything at all except numb and dumb. Her head didn't feel as if it belonged to her, and when he gave her a push which sent her down the companion, she sat down in a huddle on the bottom step and shut her eyes. The wind drowned Jimmy Halliday's voice and the furious bang of the door above her.

She might have sat there for a long time if the boat had not been rolling so. She got up and made her way to her own cabin and lay down upon the berth. The squall lessened. The boat rolled. Once she heard Jimmy Halliday's voice pitched on a note of rage. He was swearing at somebody else now, which was a comfort. She rather gathered that he was swearing at Gale Anderson.

Then the voice was gone. She fell asleep.

CHAPTER VIII

They landed next day in the very early morning. The wind had dropped and the rain was coming down, not heavily but in a fine weave of mist and water which blotted out both sea and hills. There remained a muddy foreshore sprinkled with boulders and coated with a yellowish rust, and above it a stretch of wet grey road, and a car.

The driver left his seat, exchanged a few inaudible words with James Halliday, and rowed off to the yacht. Gale Anderson took his place at the wheel. Mrs. Halliday and Riddle were helped in. Ann took a back seat and was barricaded with suit-cases. The rest of the luggage went on behind, and with Jimmy Halliday on the seat beside the driver they began to climb towards the unseen hills.